Vice President Biden @ UNH

As previously
mentioned, I was on the waiting list for tickets to see Vice President
Biden's appearance at the University Near Here. To my surprise, this
actually worked. Yesterday, I got an e-missive providing me a link to
a page whence I could download my PDF ticket (reproduced here for your
amusement, click to embiggen).

And so I went.
Lots of security, of course: many unfamiliar cop cars and other
vehicles, and traffic was forced into unfamiliar patterns.
The screening on the way in was slightly less
rigorous than that encountered for an airplane journey; nobody offered
to touch my junk.

No bags. No backpacks. Signs, banners, liquids, umbrellas, and laptops
not permitted. But "personal cameras" are allowed, unfortunate that
I don't actually own one. Attendees were urged to show up early,
which (as it turned out) gave me a lot of time to look around aimlessly
inside the venue (the Granite State Room of the Memorial Union
Building).

Most attendees were, of course, college kids, dressed in the usual
casual-to-sloppy attire. A smattering were well-dressed; I speculate
these were the wannabe-someday pols. A few rows of seating down front
were reserved, and those people seemed to be local bigwigs in the
Democratic Party and the University, not that there's no overlap there.
About ten video cameras filled the back of the room, and I noticed some
on-air personalities from Manchester's TV station, WMUR.

The curtains on the outside windows were drawn, and some were taped
shut,
I assume a safeguard against snipers. I reflected that if I were to
do anything odd, I'd probably find myself surrounded by a bunch of
polite well-dressed guys with electronics in their ears. Is there
a problem here, sir? So I just sat still.

And of course, things ran signficantly late. But eventually UNH
President
Mark Huddleston took the stage, introducing Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan, a student speaker whose name I didn't catch, and
the Vice President.

The rationale for the visit was to introduce the Obama Administration's
new "Title IX" regulations concerning sexual assault on college campuses.
(White House press release is here.)
Duncan's speech was brief and dry; the student's speech was
brief and strident; neither was under any illusion that anyone was
there to listen to them.

Violence against women is an issue Biden clearly cares a lot about. (I
mean really cares, rather than just paying politician-style lip
service.) He gave more of a sermon than a speech. There were no applause
lines, no laugh lines, and the audience mostly sat in silence. (The only
chuckle came when Biden discussed meeting UNH President Huddleston back
in Delaware, decades back.)

You would be excused for thinking that this whole exercise was aimed
specifically at actual violence against women, a relatively black and
white issue. (And one more suited to straightforward local law enforcement
than college bureaucracy.)
But if you click
some of the links off that White House link above, you'll discover that
the new regulations target "sexual harassment" and "discrimination"
as well. In short, colleges will have to be even more careful in this
area now, and aggrieved parties will have significantly more avenues to
pursue their gripes. Given the Administration's general progressive
proclivities, this isn't surprising, but it's interesting that they
scrupulously avoided talking about anything but violence.

Even given the relatively non-controversial focus, there were a couple
of howlers in Biden's presentation. He trotted out the story about
the "rule of thumb" phrase: that it originally referred to a legal principle
allowing a man to beat his wife with a stick, as long as its diameter
didn't exceed the width of his thumb. This has long since been
debunked, but the Veep apparently lives in a bubble of epistemic closure.

Biden also (I'm pretty sure, sorry, I didn't record the talk)
echoed the claim found on the White House page linked above rationalizing this whole
effort: that "1 in 5" young college women "will be a victim of sexual
assault during college." This is widely repeated in feminist circles as a fact,
but anyone who has a mind to be skeptical should read this
City Journal article by Heather Mac Donald. She thinks it's a
myth; I'm inclined to agree. Does the Administration really need to
justify their regulatory actions via dubious and scarifying propaganda?

Perhaps the most unintentionally incongruous comment came from Biden's
informal shout-outs as he started his talk; one went to attendee Timothy
Horrigan. This might have struck some as odd, because Timothy gained
more than a bit of notoriety last year for fantasizing
about the assassination of Sarah Palin. A bit of too-late advice
to the Vice President: maybe Tim's not the right
guy to rhetorically embrace at a violence-against-women event.

Four Lions

A comedy about a not-very-funny subject: domestic Muslim terrorism.
OK, so it's a dark comedy, fueled by the
idiocy of the wannabe terrorists. And if you're amused by stupidity,
these guys are the real deal. Think Dumb & Dumber or
The Big Lebowski, except that the protagonists are bent
on mass murder. Or the Three Stooges, playing with actual explosives.

The movie concentrates on Omar, a seemingly well-assimilated guy
with a wife and kid, and a decent job as a security guy at a mall.
The movie follows him and his cohorts struggling to make a video
announcing their jihadic activities, travelling to a terrorist training camp
in Pakistan, planning and training for their big event: suicide bombers at
the London Marathon.

The protagonists are up against an equally stupid anti-terror machinery.
Most of their preparations
are invisible to law enforcement. In fact,
instead of taking down the terrorists, the cops manage to bust
Omar's perfectly pacifist brother instead. (And don't even get
me started on the sad fate of the marathon-running Wookiee.)

It's difficult to take the movie seriously, and I mean that
in more ways than one. Specifically: if the movie weren't
aiming at laughs, if Omar and his crew weren't utter dimwits,
then it would be roundly denounced as the worst kind of anti-Muslim
propaganda.
For example, Omar's wife and kid seem to be
aware of,
and perfectly OK with, Omar's goal of killing himself and a bunch
of innocents. That would be absolutely bone-chilling if true, but
it's a comedy, so ha-ha.

The Automatic Detective

I picked this up due to its appearance on this io9 list
of the "Top 10 Greatest Science Fiction Detective Novels Of All Time".
And it's not bad.

The title refers to Mack Megaton; he is seven feet tall, around 700
pounds, and a nearly-indestructible robot. Originally designed by
a mad scientist to lead a robotic horde for purposes of world
domination, he went straight; as the book opens, he's a cab driver
in Empire City, a megalopolis of scientific innovation (mostly
dangerous) and random mutation (thanks to all sorts of scientific
innovations gone awry). Mack is also the recipient of the "glitch",
a poorly understood software bug that's provided him with free will.

By sheerest coincidence, Mack lives next door to a family with two
mutant kids. Things kick off when they are inexplicably abducted,
and Mack is targeted by the perpetrators
for deactivation. He's plunged into the middle
of a vast conspiracy, where nobody, robot or biological, can be trusted.
Along the way he meets up with all sorts of (mostly literally)
colorful characters, is in constant peril,
and engages in major and minor episodes of
explosive mayhem. And as the book develops, he masters the most
important tool in the hard-boiled private dick's arsenal: the well-timed
wisecrack.

It's a lot of fun, although I'm not sure I'd put it on a ten-best list.
As the plot develops, Mack relies a lot less on his wits, and more on
his bulk and weaponry. That can get old after a couple dozen pages.
But if you're a fan of old-timey private eyes and gadgety
science fiction, there's a pretty good chance you'll enjoy it.

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